Ethical, legal and policy issues in management of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.

Alcohol use during pregnancy may have severe and lasting effects on the developing fetus. Unfortunately it is often difficult to detect and address maternal drinking, as previous articles in this series have demonstrated. The difficulty is only compounded by a number of ethical quandaries and legal concerns. Underlying most of these concerns is a particularly agonizing conflict of obligations: to protect vulnerable, nascent human life on the one hand, and to preserve the privacy, dignity, and trust of one's patient on the other.